


Sleeping Without the Weight of Dreams

by Estirose



Category: My Time At Portia (Video Game), Zero: Akai Chou | Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:08:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24281071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Estirose/pseuds/Estirose
Summary: Sae is starting her new life in Portia, on the advice of her adoptive father. As she rests on a park bench in Central Plaza, she ends up with company... a scientist with a love of reading and some good advice.(Into a Bar 2020: Kurosawa Sae meets Petra!)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3
Collections: A Ficathon Goes Into A Bar





	Sleeping Without the Weight of Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> I've been thinking about how to do a crossover for My Time at Portia where the Builder is from another fandom entirely. Fortunately, my assignment for Into a Bar features Sae from the Fatal Frame series and Petra from MTaP so I finally got inspired to write something of the sort!
> 
> Figuring how to fit Sae in was a bit of a challenge, but I think it worked out well.

It had been an exhausting day as far as Sae was concerned. She hadn't slept well the night before, thanks to the gaps in the floor. She'd finally fixed that this morning, but that just meant she'd be rested tomorrow. Hopefully, at least, if her nightmares didn’t keep her awake.

She'd also run around hitting rocks, chopping trees, and meeting people. Everybody she'd met had been very nice - except Higgins - and she could see why her adoptive father had loved this town.

"Hi, can I sit here?" came a voice from above and to her left. She looked up. A dark-skinned girl with a book under her arm was standing there. 

"Yes," Sae told her. It was funny how she'd gotten used to saying hello to people instead of the other way around. In her home village, there had been few outsiders and she'd gotten introduced to them after they'd met her father.

The girl – woman, Sae realized - sat down gracefully beside her. "Nice to meecha. I'm Petra. You're Sae, aren't you? The new builder."

"Yes. I'm sorry we haven't met before." There had to be people she just didn't see today, though she felt like she'd met so many. 

"You just got here yesterday late, right? I bet this is your first full day." Petra had a warm smile on, which comforted Sae.

"It is." It had been a long trip from Barnarock and Sae had been glad to rest. Even if she hadn't slept well, it was still something. A roof over her head, her adoptive father had said. "Where are you from?"

"Ethea," Petra said. "I came here looking for a living AI, but Merlin and I haven't found one yet."

The science center. Nora, the sister at the Church of the Light, had mentioned the place and the woman who ran it but Sae hadn't found it yet. She hadn't been in any hurry to find it. The less she talked to scientists, the better. She and Maurice, her adoptive father, had agreed on that. 

After all, she knew how people reacted to someone who had come from the time before the Age of Darkness and her time had been even before that. What these people considered artifacts were mostly from her future, and all traces of her own world seemed to be lost. When Maurice and his team had found her, she had been alone except for her memories and the vague remains of her village, now turned into an island. One of his team had been a scientist, who had wanted to know everything about the world she came from and how she'd gotten there.

She could tell him about her world, except the secret rituals of her village, but she'd had no idea how she'd ended up there. At first, she thought she'd reached the afterlife, but it had become clear that she hadn't after she'd been asked so many questions. The questions had worn her down and Maurice had been forced to intervene. He'd taught her about the ways of the world and how to fit in, taught her the language and the strange-but-familiar writing system, and adopted her so that she'd have a family again.

And then he'd taken her to Barnarock, so that she could start her new life. She adored Fan Ci, her new sister, and Kendra, her new aunt. 

"Oh," she replied, and Petra's expression fell a bit.

"Faithful member of the Church of the Light?" Petra asked. Sae knew why; some members of the Church were very anti-technology and anti-relic.

"Not really. It's just... the first scientist I met gave me a bad impression of scientists." She wanted to get along with everyone she could. As long as Petra and Merlin didn't question her to death she'd be fine. 

She could see Petra's brain working, and then she was silent for about a minute. "Oh. Oh! You're the person they found in the Riben islands!"

Sae winced.

Petra looked at her. "Don't worry. I'm not going to ask you a million questions. But I do want to know: was he correct that your civilization is less advanced than ours? That way I won't assume you know something you don't."

"He was correct," Sae answered. She decided to change the subject. "Do you like to read?"

Petra's eyes lit up. "I love reading! I read a lot of nonfiction. How about you?"

"I had to learn a whole new language! But I like to read too. I used to read a lot of history at home and the rare books that came from outside. I still like history." Trying to understand what had happened had fascinated her for a few weeks at least. Maurice had had to drag her out of local libraries once she could understand the words on the page.

"I can imagine it was quite a change. Does reading help?" Petra asked.

"Yes." Books had always been comforting, and so much more when they were really the only familiar things. 

"If you're interested, I can recommend a few books… and lend you some of mine." She indicated the book she held in her hand. "This one's about wind power." 

Petra wasn't speaking down to her, which she appreciated. "I'd like that very much. I suspect I'll have some time on my hands. And I'd like to learn more about this world."

Maybe the nightmares of killing everyone in her village would stop if she found something else to occupy her sleepy mind. 

"Are you okay?" Petra asked. Her concern was touching and a relief, and she was so different from the man who had been with Maurice.

"I… sometimes have nightmares. About my original home. My father, my sister… the village." Maybe Petra would know someone who could help with it, though doctors in Barnarock didn't have anything that could stop them. "I keep dreaming that I killed my entire village."

"I'm no doctor," Petra told her. "And I don't think even Dr. Xu would know how to fix that – though it might not hurt to ask. But have you considered writing a book? Maybe it would help."

"Write a book?" She had never written anything except in the diary she'd shared with Yae. Her diary had helped, though, and maybe that was what Petra was talking about.

"Well, it would help people know what your village was like, and maybe it would help you make peace with your past."

That made sense. These people had little to no history of the world that had been long before, of her time. They had a little history of the country that she'd lived in, but nothing specific. Somebody had to write the histories, tell the stories that had been in the books she'd grown up with.

In this case, it looked like that person might be her.

"But I have no idea how to write a book," she said finally. "I don't know where to start."

"You've met Alice, right?" Petra asked. "She writes stories. She could help you out."

Sae had, though briefly. Not enough to know what Alice did besides sell flowers, but of course, she had only been in town a little more than a day. She'd get to know all of them in time.

"Thanks," she said. "For both the offer and the idea. I'll sleep on it."

Petra chuckled as Sae got up. She already felt better. Time to go to bed, hope to sleep without dreams, and start again.

Her adoptive father had been right. She'd needed a new beginning, a place to call her own, a chance to find her way in this new and odd world. Maybe someday she'd find out why she was alive, what happened to her, and where she was meant to be. In the meantime, Portia had welcomed its new builder, and Sae could only do her best for it.

**Author's Note:**

> Portia is hinted to be set on the ruins of a fictional version of Dubei Township in China, from what I can tell. It's not really anywhere near the coast (though closer than some parts of China), so I figured that quite a bit of China was submerged. I figured the same thing happened to Japan, turning it more into a set of islands than it already is. Sae was a bit of a challenge, since she's dead (and the main antagonist of Fatal Frame II to boot, thanks to her spirit being corrupted), so I kind of handwaved her timeline being split at the moment of her getting separated from Yae in the forest. This version ended up falling down a time hole but is somewhat affected by an echo of canon Sae's memories.
> 
> Since the Age of Corruption in My Time at Portia features living AIs that are cooks on space stations, it's safe to say that it's more advanced than our time, and even more so for Sae's. So who knows what books still remain of Sae's time, much less Minakami village!


End file.
